“How the hell are you retired at age 50?” I get that question all the time. I didn’t hit the lottery. I didn’t have a long lost ancestor leave me a fortune. I didn’t sell drugs for a year and then walk away clean. It was planned. It was a goal. I never really put an age to that goal, but I constantly monitored the progress until we got to the point we could do this.
First and foremost, “retirement” is different for everyone. Some people travel, some people dedicate their lives to their grandchildren, some people just want to sit on their porch and drink for the rest of their lives. How you spend your time after you stop chasing the almighty dollar is very personal, and no two people have the exact same idea of how it should be done. There’s truly no right or wrong answer.
Secondly…I’m not really retired. I work harder now than I probably ever have. I just work at things I love doing. Instead of working to generate income to buy things, I work to produce the things we need. That’s my idea of a perfect world. Every night I plan out what I’m going to do the next day, wake up in the morning and get started. Although it’s usually weather-driven, I do plan the occasional day off. I travel to hunt and fish with friends of mine, I take time to visit family and friends…but for the most part I work at things I love doing.
I guess the moment of realization came when I was in my mid thirties. My shoulders were wrecked. To move my elbows off my ribs racked me with a white-hot pain in my shoulders. I literally could not touch the top of my head with either hand. I had to tuck my chin as tight as I could to my chest to wash my hair and even then the pain was excruciating. After seeing how damaged the shoulders were the orthopedic surgeon who re-built my wings went through my entire medical record and started ordering x-rays and MRI’s for other issues I was having while I was going through post-operative therapy. He sat me down one day and started showing me all the scar tissue, calcium deposits and arthritis, starting at my toes and working north. When he was done he told me I’d be lucky to be walking by the time I hit sixty-five. That’s a lot of reality to wrap your head around for someone as young as I was.
Doc Brand was a pretty straight shooter. He told you the truth as he saw it, regardless of whether you liked it or not. Bedside manner be damned, he was my kinda doctor…hell, he was my kind of person. So when he laid that bleak picture out for me, I really started to assess my situation. A couple years later I heard the same sort of thing from another doctor who was conducting my exit physical as I prepared for retirement from the Marine Corps, and it was clear that I needed to finalize that assessment.
I’m not a mathematician by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve got the basics down. I was staring at my 40th birthday on the calendar the year that second doctor reiterated Doc Brand’s prognosis. I figured if I kept active I could add a few years to that number, but math never lies….I was middle aged in the most literal sense and according to Doc, the last decade or so wasn’t going to be pretty.
The reflection period of my assessment was a little disheartening. The reality of your situation is a little difficult to come to terms with at times. I’d been working for someone else since I was 12 years old. Mowing lawns, delivering papers, painting houses, slinging pizzas…I’d been chasing dollars most of my life and all of my adult life, and truth be told I had little to show for it. It was then and there that I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore. No more breaking a sweat so someone else could make a dollar for every dime I was paid. No more giving the government thirty percent of what I earned every week so they could give it to someone else. I decided right there and then that it was time to live for me.
The plan was pretty simple. I was going to work until we were debt free and had enough money saved to buy a piece of property that we could afford to pay for with nothing more than my military pension. It took a few years to get to that point, which was followed by an exhaustive search for the right piece of property, but the plan worked.
More, More, More….bigger, stronger, faster…the one who dies with the most toys, wins….That’s the way we’re geared in our society. Keep moving forward, at all cost. I think the biggest obstacle to walking away from the work force early is lacking the vision to see a path. The reason that path is so hard to find is because it’s behind us…not in front of us.
We used to be an agrarian culture with a barter and trade economic system. It was perfect. You cleared a little piece of land, built a shelter on it and worked it. You raised livestock, grew vegetables, hunted, fished and trapped and lived off what that land could provide. If you needed corn you could trade eggs for it. People worked together to get the crops in or build a barn or get the livestock moved. You worked at what you were good at doing and you could make a living doing something you loved. Whether it be a blacksmith, seamstress, cotton farmer, doctor, dentist or a whiskey distiller, everybody found a place in this culture and could live a relatively happy life. We took care of each other.
Taxation destroyed that culture. The government didn’t want your eggs or your furs…they wanted money, and if you couldn’t provide it they’d take your land which was, in essence, your livelihood. People were forced to leave their farms and go to work for others simply so they could make the money they needed to afford to pay the taxes to keep what had already belonged to their family for generations. This is a rant of mine that will take this post way off subject, so I won’t delve any further into it right now. The point I wanted to make is that there’s a different way to live if you’re willing to go that route.
To some extent we can go back to that agrarian society. It’s really not as far a stretch as most would think. People are doing it all over the country, in every climate and every setting. It’s not for everyone, and I get that. But…again…everyone’s idea of retirement is different.
The first step is finding a way to cover the expenses for the necessities. In my case, my military pension covers my mortgage, insurance, utilities, taxes and incidentals. Like I said earlier, I’m no mathematician, but even I could do the simple math to work the budget for that. I’ve read and heard of people who have sold everything they own to start over in a simpler life. Some cash in a 401k, some actually do receive an inheritance and decide to change their entire life. There are probably a million different ways to get to that point….you only need to find one.
Then you need to pick a location. This second step requires some self-awareness and careful consideration. For me, there was little doubt that I needed to start this adventure back where I knew the terrain, the people and the seasons. I couldn’t imagine doing this anywhere other than Appalachia. But there are people doing this in the Midwest, the coastal plains the deserts and the Rockies. Hell, there are people doing this while living in apartments in the cities. All it requires is a working knowledge of your environment and being able to do what it takes to thrive in that environment. There are a lot of publications and websites available to help you with ideas as you do your research to make this decision. https://www.motherearthnews.com/ and their companion site https://www.grit.com/ are two of the better ones I know. Many of the articles written on these sites and in their magazines are submitted by readers who are walking the same path. A smart man learns from his mistakes…a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Be wise and do the research.
The third step…and this is important…choose a path you’ll enjoy walking and be willing to do the work. The path I chose is what most people would call a “hobby farm”. Most days though, it feels like anything but a “hobby”. It took us a couple years to get up and running, and we’ve encountered quite a few successes and failures along the way, but I couldn’t imagine living any other way now. We grow, harvest and preserve our own vegetables, we have chickens for eggs and spend hours in the woods each summer picking wild berries. We’ve built a pond which is stocked with fish that will be ready for harvest next year after the spawn. The apple and pear trees are still a couple years from producing, but the strawberry patch has been productive the last two years. If you eat red meat in our house it’s venison that was harvested, processed and prepared right here on the farm. Turkey, squirrel and rabbit are plentiful here. We sold hay from our fields for a couple years and may go back to that in time. There’s something to do all year long. Equipment and structures always require maintenance and repair, the chicken coops and garden are constantly evolving as we learn new and innovative ideas and the cutting, splitting, hauling and stacking of firewood are continuous chores.
This next topic really isn’t a step in the planning process. There’s no way to properly plan for some things. But, you have to realize up front that you can’t really go at this kind of change in your life alone. I didn’t realize how fortunate we were when we finally found this property. You can buy a house anywhere. You can buy land anywhere. But you can’t buy good neighbors. Most of my adult life I’ve been accused of being anti-social. I’m naturally slow to trust and quick to find fault, but I am quite literally surrounded by the best people you could hope for. Advice, guidance and direction have flowed freely from the first day I pulled the truck into the driveway. We’ve never been treated “neighborly” here…we’ve been treated like family here. I’ve been given free reign to traverse, hunt and forage on the surrounding farms, I’ve been pointed to where the berries grow and where the deer like to travel and we’ve been invited to every family gathering that’s happened in this hollow. Everyone around us gives so freely of themselves…the only word I know to explain it is “heartwarming”. I’ve learned more from just sitting and talking to my neighbors than I could have learned researching the internet for days. Between the neighbors and the parishioners from my wife’s church, we felt ingrained into this community quickly and after four short years I truly couldn’t imagine life elsewhere now.
More important than the land, equipment, critters, finances and neighbors is your partner in all of this. None of this…not one single piece of this works without my bride pulling her share of the load. She amazes me daily with the way she keeps everything running like clockwork around here. Most days she’s juggling a half dozen chores around the house, while simultaneously taking care of the critters and working to keep her commitments to her church, and she makes it look effortless. She bakes ninety percent of our sweets, keeps my fat-ass fed and does it all with a smile on her face and sparkle in her eyes. During the summer months throw in canning, freezing and preserving everything that comes out of the garden along with making her own jams, jellies and salsa. During the fall throw in all the crap that comes with my hunting addiction, my hunting buddies and our drinking…ummm…I mean HUNTING adventures. Whatever you decide to do in your retirement, your partner has to be “all in” with you. It won’t work if they’re not. I couldn’t do any of this without her…but don’t tell her I said that….I’m afraid if she thinks I notice all she does around here she’ll quit striving to impress me.
Okay…I know what you’re thinking. I’d be thinking the same thing. How are you going to be able to keep working like this if Doc said you’re going to be down hard in another 15 years? The answer is simple: I don’t know. I really don’t know how long I can keep this up. I know that it takes me longer to do things that I used to fly right through. I know that seemingly every day I’m forced to acknowledge another limitation that I never thought I’d have to deal with. I know everything hurts; especially the mornings. I know I’ve had to rely on equipment to do jobs that I used to do with hand tools. It’s frustrating. My mind is still sharp and it’s constantly running a hundred miles an hour and my body fails me in ways I won’t even bore you with. But here’s the key…and the point to this whole post….even with the frustration, pain and discomfort I absolutely can not wait to get my day started every morning…and when it all boils down, that’s what your retirement should be: waking up for as many consecutive mornings as you can wanting nothing more than to get your day started…regardless of whether you’re traveling, playing with the grand-kids, drinking on the front porch or hoeing the rows in the garden. Life’s short friends…I strongly recommend living as many days as you can making your life rich in whatever adventure you choose rather than making your employer rich in funds they’ll probably just squander.
